Do the mashed potato

Thing Thirteen: Mashups

I could have used something a little more high level about mashups before being dumped right into creating specific mashups. One mashup I keep meaning to get around to is something with our memorial tree web page, something map based. I'm sure it is doable, possibly using Google maps. Another geographically- minded mashup is to combine the SCA membership directory with a map, that would be so useful when trying to find folks for local arrangements.

Thing Fourteen: Widgets

I added the Twitter widget to my blog. It behaved kind of funky, not loading the tweets, just doing the little rotating flower petal thing to show it was trying. So first I logged out of my Twitter window. That helped, but the little tool icons for the blog owner still showed even though I had signed out of the blog and was trying to view it as a reader. So I closed out all of my browser windows, but when I returned I still had the tool icons. Finally I went to my Google Reader, ah, that had kept me logged in despite having exited the browser. Signed out of Reader and returned to the blog without signing in. Success. But now I see that one of my other widgets is lining up to the left rather than under the heading. Unfortunately that is a blogger-defined widget; justification is not a setting option and it won't let me into the code to fix it. Guess I have to ignore my inner obcom and live with it for now. Nope, realize now that widget adds little value, it's outta here!

Will have to explore other widgets and badges later. Like those places-I-have-been things that you can embed in your web site. I remember the Great Turtle Race having some fun widgets in the past for tracking the race and your chosen turtle, but the site seems to have retreated in functionality, perhaps it's just that the race is not on at the moment.